By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor

Telephone wires have met their match and they may soon be a thing of the past.  A technology called voice over IP, or VoIP is now being used to transmit phone calls over the internet and it is changing the landscape of voice communication in virtual offices worldwide.

However, according to a recent Phone.com (News - Alert) blog post “VoIP In A Fishbowl”, with digital technology these days, the darker side of the technology community has its sights on VoIP.

Stuart Zipper, contributing editor to Communications Technology, a high tech business journalism consultant and freelancer, and the past senior editor of TelecomWeb news break discussed how VoIP is taking over and it that could affect some people negatively.

Zipper predicts that the coming tidal wave of mobile VoIP applications will be running both on smartphones and portable devices including laptops and slates.

“Add the two together – mobile VoIP and security – and the outcome could be explosive: hackers potentially intercepting VoIP calls,” he said. “I don’t know about others, but I don’t want all and sundry listening in to my phone calls to my doctor, my lawyer, my stockbroker, etc.”

The National Security Agency (News - Alert) (NSA) has had the same worries, that when it eventually converts to mobile VoIP its spooks calls might be intercepted, national secrets compromised. It turns out that the NSA has been conducting a study entitled “Mobility Capability Package” – code named Fishbowl – that has come up with a nascent secure version of VoIP, running on the Android (News - Alert) operating system.

So what does this all mean for VoIP users?

Zipper said, “Simply that I foresee an awakening among wireless providers that there are security issues involved in mobile VoIP, and that awareness is sure to eventually lead to more secure communications for all of us. For business VoIP users it means greater security as business increasingly adopt mobile VoIP applications.”